Since the announcement of the theaters’ closure, there have been successive notices of cancellation or suspension of shows and films. Again this week for La Traviata of the Opéra de Montréal scheduled for late January. This puzzle of ticket refunds is managed with the know-how acquired during the first confinement, but also with a heavy heart. The health authorities may well foresee outbreaks in February, some directors of artistic temples have not put their dreams of an Omicron on fire, which burns hard and will die out quickly. Calendars display barely changed schedules at the start of the year; other grids exhibit the gaping holes of the next few months. A climate of hesitation and confusion.
If optimists dream of the near end of the curfew, the fashion for rainbows and “it’s going to be fine” appears to be in sharp decline. Who can, today, deny the need to reduce their contacts, even in protected places, apart from influencers on a spree?
Friends of culture know, however, that society is going through a turning point in their sector. At the end of the tunnel, fragile works could seriously struggle to find their audience one day. Because the tidal wave changes habits. New modes of cultural consumption were already sweeping away the old ones before the pandemic. Cutting bridges accelerates the process of collective change. Anguish is palpable in the community. Except that today, everyone feels touched and knows those around them infected. Theater directors, who protested in December, did so with less exasperation than in previous waves, but with as much difficulty and a touch of philosophy.
Take the New World Theater (TNM). Lysis, adapted from the comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes (411 BC) on a sex strike for women in Athens to end the war, was to take the poster from January 11 after a first Covidian postponement. A free creation by Fanny Britt and Alexia Bürger directed by Lorraine Pintal, the play offers contemporary action in Montreal and multiple challenges to women’s struggles. Bénédicte Décary plays the title role. However, the new enemy with the Greek name of Omicron thwarts theatrical projects with toga effects. The heart groans. Things are going so badly everywhere.
Lorraine Pintal, the director of the TNM this week made the decision to cancel Lysis. “It’s a great mourning, she confesses, a real heartbreak. A piece worn for two years, which faces its second cancellation… ” Lysis are still there, beating their wings, waiting for repetitions passed out. There remains the possibility of postponing the show to spring 2024. The horizon seems distant, but it passes quickly. And then a recording is on the menu for key scenes from the play with the upcoming webcast.
Lorraine Pintal focuses on The Three Sisters by Chekhov, scheduled on his boards in February. It is offered until January 31 before making a final decision. “I try not to give up too quickly, but if I have to…”
The Amazon no longer warrants as before, protesting against the closure of artistic temples, so respectful of instructions. “Medical operations are canceled. And we, we would like to open a theater with seventeen performers for an audience that would ask questions? Would he come from elsewhere? asks the theater lady. The Omicron is a huge transmission rate. The theaters must show solidarity with the suffering population. Were our rooms hatching hotbeds? I think not. But the catastrophe is global. I do not want to do as in Belgium by declaring that a living art must prevail above all. “
In fact, monster demonstrations in Brussels on Boxing Day had pushed the state to reopen theaters and cinemas already closed. Proof of the importance of art in Europe, flagship of the old continent. Still, the hour is serious. Can culture, so vital, run on an empty track? For a few weeks, at least, holding your breath seems to many the only other possible option.
In Quebec, since the first turmoil of COVID, the TNM had suffered less from health constraints than from more fragile institutions. “But we haven’t been able to organize school matinees for two years. Will we find the young audience? Lorraine Pintal asks anxiously. If the cultural community has muffled its loud cries in the face of the magnitude of Hurricane Omicron, it will none the less emerge from the pandemic episodes. Perhaps more attentive to the great tragedies when it comes time to testify, however. Creation is also a matter of resilience.